Over the past few weeks, I’ve alluded to some big changes coming for TMP. Since I hate drama, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. Here’s the dealio: In 2011, TMP will be making some tangible resources available to help you advance in self-leadership. 
As much as I love e-mailing and coaching and twittering with so many of you, I cannot always be available to everyone who wants help at the exact time that they may think that they need it. So, we at TMP have put a few things in writing; stuff that will eventually become resources you can pull out and reference in the future . For those days when you need a little nudge back towards the path of self-leadership, but it’s 3:34 a.m. and you’re pretty sure I’m asleep. Or that I should be.
The first thing you’ll see in the next month or so will be TMP’s first e-book. It’s called “The Way Forward” (yes that is a picture of the cover). The subtitle is “an open letter for anyone still figuring out what the hell to do with your life.” I started writing it after yet another meeting with a recent college graduate who was bemoaning the mind-numbingly boring entry level job she had scored immediately after graduation. I’ll never forget the look on her face when she said to me: “I can literally feel myself getting dumber with every piece of data I enter.”
As soon as that conversation ended, I came back to my office and just started writing. I wrote everything I had said to her, everything I still wanted to say, everything I wished I’d said, to her and to you and to so many others. My passion for you poured out into those pages, and many of those words and ideas later showed up as blog posts here at TMP. We’ve taken a bunch of those concepts and teachings and bundled them into this e-book, and the result is something I think you’re really going to like and more than that, hopefully use and feel encouraged by.
We’re also working on an updated Moxy Assessment Map (MAM), that will help you drill down into specific elements of self-leadership in your life. And, I’m finishing up a white paper about self-leadership in the workplace, as well as a new piece describing what I do for organizations that contact me for more group consulting work, versus the personal coaching that I did almost exclusively last year.
In the next few months, I’ll also be asking you guys what else you want/need to help you grow in self-leadership in 2011. I’ve been given several suggestions of things that you all would find helpful; everything from doing videos on the blog to interviewing former clients to creating materials in more of a workbook format, with specific self-leadership exercises that can be followed and tracked. I’d love to know how you feel about all those, because GOD BLESS AMERICA creating products is a HUMONGOUS GIGANTIC METRIC TON of work and I will need to remember your voices crying out in the wilderness for guidance when I’m awake at 3:34 a.m. writing stuff I think no one will ever read.
I want you to know that I got A. Lot. of advice about creating products when I started working on the projects I’ve described above. Apparently, I’m not the first person to think of writing down what I say and do so people can have it for themselves and look at it anytime they want. I learned a tremendous amount—much more than I ever want to know, actually–about how the whole selling shiz on the interwebs works. Many , many people made clear to me what they thought I should do, how I should do it, and how much I should charge you for it. I spent a long time overanalyzing thinking about what my purpose was in putting this kind of stuff out there for you, and I have come to a place of clarity and resolve regarding this new day at TMP.
And I’ll tell you the conclusion I came to about that next week. For now, I want to close by asking you to think about what kind of content you are contributing to the world (or, more specifically, to the world wide web). Is much of what you give primarily narcissistic, as in you post pictures from your family vacation to Facebook? Status updates about how impressive your dinner/party/road trip/children are?
Or are you creating something with your life and time; something truly original in the sense that it came from you, and that no one but your particular self could have come up with it?
Are you putting a theory out into the world that may not be fully tested, but which inspires us to think about what could be?
Are you taking a risk by sharing something not yet totally formed or developed but that you want shared more than you want credit?
Are you thinking about what is possible rather than what is deniable?
Think about those things. Take some time–even a few minutes– and apply yourself to producing something totally yours.
A poem. A meal. A letter. A picture.
A playlist. A bucket list.
A decision. An answer. A question.
It doesn’t as much matter what it is as it matters that you do it.
Great post … looking forward to your ebook!